


We're All Mad Here

by Poofy_Kakapo



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Amamiya Ren and Kurusu Akira Are Twins, Anal Sex, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Come Inflation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Infidelity, First Time Blow Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, Interspecies Relationship(s), Large Cock, M/M, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Post-Canon, Ren is the brother he left behind, Sad and Happy, Secret Relationship, Self-Indulgent, Size Kink, Touch-Starved, only Akira is a Phantom Thief, sorta - Freeform, this is strictly speaking Ren/Arsene but the other tag has more works soo...
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 12:42:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30005070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Poofy_Kakapo/pseuds/Poofy_Kakapo
Summary: Ren tugged down Arsene's mask, kissed it wherever he could reach, nibbled at the corners where it met the leathery skin and was rewarded with a shudder from the persona. Was rewarded with an irregular beat of his wings as they ghosted over Ren's side. Flames licked back at his face in Arsene's own version of a kiss, hot and stinging, coming from the mask almost as if in puffy breaths, and Ren let his hands roam blindly over Arsene's torso, rubbing at his shoulder in encouragement and affection before trailing his fingers down to the sensitive skin between his wings. He let his nails run over it, along at the edges of the feathers, and Arsene shuddered again.Arsene was Ren's.In all the ways that truly mattered to them.But.Akira would be back sometime that week, from his summer vacation adventure that Ren's only barely gotten wind of.Akira, who was Ren's older twin by a few minutes.Akira, who had been sent to Tokyo on probation, unlike Ren.Akira, who was the leader of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, unlike Ren.Akira, who had the power of persona on his side, unlike Ren.Akira,who was the one that Arsene belonged to, unlike Ren.
Relationships: Amamiya Ren/Arsene (Persona Series), Arsene & Kurusu Akira, Arsene & Persona 5 Protagonist, Arsene/Kurusu Akira
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	We're All Mad Here

**Author's Note:**

> Arsene's fucking design just kills me, okay? I had to. This started as pure smut and evolved to have a stupidly bittersweet plot, though, help

Ren heaved back a sob as he came, back arched and toes curling, his arms winding around Arsene's neck. One of the persona's clawed hands was supporting him, splayed open over the small of his back, the other grabbing a fistful of the duvet cover, and he was thrumming at Ren even as his pace begun to speed up and became much more erratic than before. Any feeling of shame over what it was that they were doing, human and persona, was overridden by pure sensual desire.

Ren eagerly rolled his hips in encouragement, felt Arsene move and hit all of the sweet spots of his oversensitive body, felt the tears start to gather at the corner of his eyes. He tugged down Arsene's mask, kissed it wherever he could reach, nibbled at the corners where it met the leathery skin and was rewarded with a shudder from the persona. Was rewarded with an irregular beat of his wings as they ghosted over Ren's side, with a delicious twitch of that large cock that stretched out Ren's skin due to its sheer girth. Flames licked back at his face in Arsene's own version of a kiss, hot and stinging, coming from the mask almost as if in puffy breaths, and Ren let his hands roam blindly over Arsene's torso, rubbing at his shoulder in encouragement and affection before trailing his fingers down to the sensitive skin between his wings. He let his nails run over it, along at the edges of the feathers, and Arsene shuddered again, twitched forward and deeper into Ren from the unexpectedness of it.

Ren hissed in pleasure and let himself fall down onto the covers when Arsene removed his hand, suddenly, to grip at Ren's hips and tug them closer together, thrusting into the human with a keening noise. _"Ren--"_ He said, and Ren had huffed an amused "I know," and then a warm, _"me too."_

Arsene had quirked what might've been a grin before Ren had squeezed around him, and then he came, filling Ren's insides with come that Ren swore he could sometimes taste at the back of his throat, thick and warm and vaguely tasting like fire, or heat. Ren's own dick twitched, still spent from his earlier climax. The come was so much that it made his lower abdomen swell, if only a little, and when Arsene made to withdraw Ren locked his legs around him in protest.

Arsene rumbled a laugh, a deep, bass sound that made his mask vibrate, and then carefully stroked Ren's hair out of his face and wiped at the tears in the corner of his eyes with mismatched black-and-white skin that still made Ren's hair stand on edge.

Usually, Ren loved to watch Arsene like this, languid and happy with a low-flickering flame, loved to see the contrast between their skin; Arsene's was so dark, almost obsidian, that it made Ren's tan seem almost milky in comparison, leathery and soft at the same time, like the scales on the belly of a snake. Lately though, he couldn't stomach it, the white patches spreading further and further every time Ren saw them anew: discolorations almost like vitiligo that had started on his neck and spread to his right shoulder and left hand and then down across the plane of his stomach and his legs, a visualization of the folly that they were begetting together.

A timer, for every instance that Arsene was ignoring the pull to be summoned.

The glow of Arsene's mask dimmed, the fire a flickering ember now, and Ren wished so strongly to be able to discern Arsene's emotions, because he was closing off again, and Ren wasn't a mind reader.

Instead Ren grabbed the retreating hand, so very gently, and kissed the back of it and lay it over his cheek. _"I wish,"_ The persona started, only to trail off. His hand twitched on Ren's cheek before trailing down, claws leaving a hot trail on his body before flattening out over the swell of his abdomen, where they were connected, Arsene still inside him, soft now and not as imposing as before.

Ren sighed and echoed his earlier words, much softer than before. "I know." And then, because it had to be said -- especially now, when the shame and guilt were coming back, to Arsene as surely as to Ren. "I love you."

Arsene leaned down his head, mask pressing against Ren's forehead. _"I love thee as well, mon cher."_

And then he, usually cutting such an imposing figure even when simply idling around, curled around Ren as tightly as possible, his wings cocooning them in even while he shifted and finally slid out of Ren, come leaking out and making a mess for the him of tomorrow while Ren curled around Arsene as well, humming an approximation of the thrumming noise back at the persona until his mask turned blank and empty of fire in sleep. Possessiveness surged inside of Ren, because Arsene shouldn't look so sad and so guilty and so patched-together, because Arsene _was Ren's._ In all the ways that truly mattered to them.

But.

Akira would be back sometime that week, from his summer vacation adventure that Ren's only barely gotten wind of.

Akira, who was Ren's older twin by a few minutes.

Akira, who had been sent to Tokyo on probation, unlike Ren.

Akira, who was the leader of the Phantom Thieves of Hearts, unlike Ren.

Akira, who had the power of persona on his side, unlike Ren.

Akira, _who was the one that Arsene belonged to, unlike Ren._

* * *

This is what happened: Akira had arrived back in Sumaru City with a new housecat and a gaggle of friends that he'd not had before, freed of his assault charge and criminal record, surer of himself and comfortable in his skin in a way that Ren had never seen before. Ren and their parents had eagerly awaited him and had welcomed all of the new friends with open arms, and Akira had told them about all of the fun he's had in the big city before his friends left and he crashed and burned in his bed, the fake glasses back in Ren's drawer next to his real ones.

(Ren had made it, and had kept Akira's room tidy, but of course his brother hadn't noticed, as exhausted as he was after a five hour drive.)

All was well in the beginning -- Akira reintegrated into his old class, got the usual seat next to Ren, and listened to Ren ramble about everything that had happened in Sumaru City over the year that Akira had been gone. Ren had started interning with Kismet Publishing after the silence in their home became almost oppressive without Akira, their parents' work taking them away for stretches at a time, not that Ren or Akira could fault them for it. One of their classmates had declared her love for Akira to Ren before moving away. Ren had somehow found himself the favorite grandchild of a bunch of grannies that were worrying over him while Akira had been gone.

Akira talked about Leblanc, about Sojiro and coffee and curry and late nights learning how to brew the former and cook the latter. About Shujin and the various jobs he took over summer. About the Phantom Thieves too, after Ren prompted him, having caught wind of it from Amano-san after she'd written an article about them. Akira had showed Ren the banner and had given him one of the pins and told Ren about the reporter and the fortune teller he'd befriended, and how Ren would've liked them or his homeroom teacher or his prosecutor.

Akira hadn't told Ren about persona. Or about the fact that Morgana was a talking cat, because Akira, while being simultaneously more open and carefree in a way he hadn't been before -- both of them were more introverted than extroverted -- had also closed himself off from Ren in a way that was new. And it hurt.

But Ren had not taken it to heart, had simply thought that Tokyo had changed Akira, that juvie had changed him--

and then he'd met Arsene. It had been night, some odd month after Akira had come back, and Ren had been thirsty, so he'd walked to the kitchen to get himself something to drink, and had passed the living room on his way back to his bed, interested to figure out where Morgana had slept that time -- it was a toss-up between Akira's room and the living room, though the cat vastly preferred Akira's.

And there Arsene sat, folded over kind of awkwardly while he had been reading a book about poetry that belonged to Ren's mother. Ren might've made a sound, because Arsene -- well, the terrifying demon, at that time -- had glanced up sharply, flames erupting from the mask of a face in what might've been surprise. _"Akira?"_ He'd made a weird noise, before amending: _"No, my apologies. Thou art Ren, correct? Thy brother has talked about thee before; it is a pleasure to meet thee. I am Arsene, one of the persona of thy brother."_

Ren, halfway believing it to be some strange fever dream, had sat down and started talking with Arsene, falling asleep somewhere in the middle of it, and had woken up in his own bed with a small note on his nightstand, next to his glasses.

 _I hope thou do not mind that I have brought thee to bed,_ it read. _Feel free to continue our talk in the morrow after everyone has lain to rest._

_\- Arsene_

They did. Unfathomably, Ren had decided to stay up and talk to the horrifying demonic monster named Arsene, and had learned of a year in Tokyo that was... _more_ , than what Akira had told him about. Persona, palaces, metacognitive realities only a phone app away; Arsene told Ren about everything and then some, answered Ren's questions to the best of his abilities.

 _"I had missed most of what happened in the middle,"_ Arsene had confessed one evening. _"Akira had to trade me for a stronger persona against Madarame because they had been desperate, and I only gathered together enough energy to rejoin the thieves at the end of Madame Nijima's palace, though Akira hath filled me in."_

Ren, utterly fascinated by what he'd heard, could not imagine trading away Arsene for-- anything.

 _"Thou flatter me,"_ the persona said. _"But it had been the only way. I do not begrudge him of it."_

Ren had learned that Akira had the ability to summon and keep multiple persona, and that Arsene currently shared Akira's mental space with Satanael, who was summoned to _literally kill a god,_ and a few more _. "The others are not nearly as fond of materializing as I, though, even if I am unable to do it as often here. Or of talking to each other -- though, granted, that may be because one is a Bicorn and another a Shiisha, amongst others."_

Ren had frowned at that, before their talk for the evening was over.

The next, he'd asked Arsene if Akira had shown him around the city, and at the negative -- apparently he'd only shown Morgana around, _really Akira?_ \-- decided to remedy that by the weekend, walking all around Sumaru City with a pair of earphones in so that it seemed as if he wasn't talking to a currently invisible Arsene.

Arsene's whole face-mask had lit up in joy at it, the fire a deep red that had Ren mesmerized and unable to look away before the persona became invisible again as a passersby walked by.

They repeated the excursion the next few days, Akira none the wiser, and Ren wondered how preoccupied his brother must've been to not notice that a literal part of himself was gone. Ren, in a moment of both envy and true brotherly spite, didn't care as long as it meant that he could spend time with Arsene; as long as it meant that he could try his hand at brewing coffee for the persona, and show him around his relatively boring city, and enjoy their late-night talks. It didn't really matter about what they talked, as long as they got to spend a few hours in each other's company -- it had gotten to the point that Ren's started reading the _Arsène Lupin_ novels after downloading them onto his phone, wary of asking Akira about the copies in his room. Three weeks passed like that, and then five, and then, one evening while Ren finished up _The Hollow Needle_ , reading it out loud with a soft voice and trying his best to emote the characters, Arsene listening with a content expression, he thought, quite viciously, _Akira doesn't deserve you._

And: _I wish that I could've been your human._

Ren finished the last paragraph and gently closed the phone, his expression harsh in the mirror of the dark screen. Arsene was doing the strange thrumming noise again, the one that reminded Ren of a purring cat, relaxed in a way that he hadn't been before. Ren gentled his features, tilting the phone this way and that, and then he glanced over to the persona. It hadn't escaped Ren, how little Arsene talked about Akira or Satanael, especially when compared to Sakamoto, Takamaki and Kitagawa. Or Morgana and their respective persona. No matter what Arsene had said, about not minding that Akira had had to exchange him, it obviously had hurt him, and Akira didn't seem to be mending any bridges between them anytime soon, especially with how often Arsene liked to materialize.

(Ren privately compared it with dogs and cats; all of the persona were like cats, not requiring much in the way of attention as long as they knew that their humans liked them or were in the room. Arsene, on the other hand, was like a dog, constantly demanding attention and validation -- a strange sight, for someone who was used to how cats behaved. Fundamentally, both were aware that their owners loved them, but dogs simply needed it shown differently.)

The metaphor aside, it's not as if Ren really compared the persona to pets, considering they very clearly were their own people. The point that he'd wanted to make was that Arsene might've behaved differently (abnormally) to the other persona, but that it didn't make him any less. Or something, Ren's lost his train of thought, there.

 _Anyways,_ Ren had been kind of almost blankly staring at Arsene's profile for a good thirty seconds now, and it was a wonder the persona hadn't noticed it, though Arsene was still quietly content. So Ren gathered together all of his courage and set his phone down between them, and leaned in to kiss Arsene on the cheek. Mask. Mask-cheek; whatever.

It was surprisingly warm and tingly, kind of, and not at all unpleasant, and Arsene whipped his head around into Ren's direction so fast that Ren could feel the heat from his horns dust over his hair. It wasn't a very calculated move on Arsene's part, because it put him squarely into mouth-kissing territory, which was exactly what Ren did, kissing Arsene roughly where his mouth was painted onto his face, one hand fisted into the cravat and another resting against the persona's shoulder.

Arsene seemed to almost melt into the kiss, one clawed hand coming up to the small of Ren's back and the other ghosting over his cheek, fire licking at Ren's mouth and maybe burning it a little bit, before the persona jerked backwards as if stung, gripping Ren by the shoulders and nicking his skin through the thin shirt. 

_"Ren, what--"_ Arsene looked spooked, sparks flying from his mask, fire flickering between red and yellow rapidly, wings standing at an angle where they threatened to topple the things on the table over. Ren wanted to bundle him up.

Instead he gentled his voice, because Arsene looked ready to bolt. "I like you. A lot." He touched one of those claws and Arsene shuddered, tugging the hand away.

 _"That is not-- why would thou-- but. How."_ A deep breath. _"I am not human."_

Ren blinked, thrown by the direction the discussion seemed to take. "I know, yes."

_"I'm a persona."_

"I'm also perfectly aware of that, Arsene."

Arsene scowled. _"Furthermore, I am-- thy brother's persona."_

Ren nodded. He was _intimately_ aware of that fact, thank you. "But you're still your own person, with your own wishes and desires and taste in coffee." That had gotten something like an amused huff out of the persona, as Ren had hoped, wings folding back normally before Arsene turned serious again.

_"I exist as a concept of rebellion that belongs to Akira's heart, as part of a greater whole, and I do not truly have a physical body of my own; I only look human in the vaguest sense, and I cannot-- I cannot-- I do not have a mouth with which to kiss thee back, amongst other things that I lack, and thou art making this quite difficult right now. Stop- why art thou smiling?"_

Ren's smile widened into a grin. "Because none of what you just said was in any way or form a denial. Arsene, _I know all of that_ , don't think that I'm rushing into this blind. I know that you are --" Ren grimaced, ever so slightly, "-- Akira's, and it hadn't escaped my mind that humans generally don't have claws or wings or fire-resistant skin, thank you very much. I like you for who you are as yourself, not as anyone or anything else. And, well." He flushed. "I can't say that the kiss was unpleasant."

Arsene stared at him, for a second, and then another, before his shoulders sagged and he let his head fall into his resting palms. _"I see that stubbornness is a family trait. Thou art-- impossible."_ He seemed to be glancing at Ren through the corner of his eyes, fire low and muted, and Ren carefully, carefully laid a hand against the edge of the mask. _"Why,"_ Arsene asked, a pointed question. A heavy question, something undiscernible hiding behind the tone of voice.

"Because--" Ren started, his fingers dancing along the seam between Arsene's skin and the mask. "Because you're an incredible creature, Arsene, and you've been through so much, and it hurts me, seeing how Akira is unknowingly ignoring you. You're unmoored in a foreign city without the other persona that you consider your friends, except maybe for Zorro, who seems to be perfectly fine with staying inside Morgana's mind most of the time. You're lonely, even if you don't want to admit it to me, but you still go out of your way to entertain me with stories and anecdotes." His voice gentled as Arsene shuddered. "I know that you look for affection and companionship with Akira, and I know that he's not understanding why you do it. I want- I want to provide it for you, if you will let me, because in these last few weeks, you have been doing the same for me, when I thought that I'd lost my brother."

Arsene's wings twitched, shivered, and he leaned into Ren's touch, ever-so-slightly, eyes dimming. _"That is not the affection that I have been seeking from Akira."_

Ren smiled slightly. "I know. But it is the affection I am offering, if you wish to take it." And because Ren was certain that there was _something_ there, in a very nebulous and undefined space.

_"I do not know how long this could last, Ren."_

Ren sighed. "I know, but I'm willing to try."

Arsene went silent in the way that he sometimes did, where his entire body went still, and Ren kept his hand there at the edge of the mask in silent support, before Arsene came back to life and lifted his head from his hands, a calculating expression settling itself over his features. Ren felt worried for all of a second before a clawed hand cupped his cheek, carefully, and Arsene leaned down towards Ren. _"Thou art impossible,"_ he repeated, much more fondly than before, and then kissed Ren.

**Author's Note:**

> be kind to your scary demon boyfriend, yeah? He deserves it


End file.
